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Tuesday, February 12, 2008

I'm a big fan of Flickr and a big fan of keyboard shortcuts. Unfortunately, Flickr doesn't have many shortcuts except for those few available for the built-in flickr slideshow. While I hope Flickr adds true keyboard shortcuts for navigation of their site, here's one way to get a few keyboard shorcuts.

GREASEMONKEY FLICKR KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS

Mark Husson has created a nifty Firefox Greasmonkey script that gives you a few useful keyboard shortcuts when you're browsing the flickr pages.

There's a key to go to the next page, previous page, first page or last page with the keyboard shortcuts.

HOW TO INSTALL AND USE FLICKR KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS SCRIPT

You obviously need to be using Firefox and have greasemonkey installed. Then download & install the script. Now, when you're on a flickr page with the numbered boxes at the bottom (photostreams, searches, etc) like this one:

Available Keyboard Shortcuts: alt+shift+n for the next page alt+shift+p for the previous page alt+shift+< for the first page, and alt+shift+> for the last page

Snapstream had decided the time and money to maintain the site outweighed any ad income or synergies it was bringing to Snapstream's Beyond TV.

Must Watch TV - Jericho Season 2

I've been touting Jericho as a must-see television show since I watched the first season earlier this year so it better be good. That being said, I expect it will continue to be an excellent show that I recommend highly. It premiers tonight (2/12) at 10pm Eastern on CBS.

Of course, now that I've got everything working most of this will be obsolete in two months or so when Hauppauge releases their Component capture card! But, for those of you who can't wait or have already invested in an Intensity Pro in hopes of getting it working with SageTV.

Monday, February 11, 2008

The writers strike has been going since November 5th and there's been plenty of TV casualties, but the strike is all but over. A tentative deal was announced Saturday, and has since then the WGA leaders have voted unanimously to endorse the new deal between the Writers Guild and the TV networks & movie studios. Once the membership votes to approve the new deal (assuming they do vote for it as expected) the writers will return back to work by Wednesday.

As I have throughout the strike, I'll continue to update the TV Show Remaining Episode list daily as this information is somewhat tentative and changing daily as the networks are working out their plans. What does the end of the strike mean to your TV shows? Many of them will return to life in early Spring.

Things are looking very good for shows such as 30 Rock, Big Bang Theory, CSI (all of them), Desperate Housewives, Gossip Girl, Grey's Anatomy, How I Met Your Mother, Lost, The Office, Private Practice, Smallville, Supernatural, Two and a Half Men, Ugly Betty and more. Some other TV shows might not recover with new episodes until next season even with the writers strike over including Heroes and 24.

With Netflixbeginning to work with vendors on integration of their "watch instantly" movie streaming, Home Theater PC Owners have been longing for support for their HTPC's. Starting today, you can manage your Netflix Queue, browse movie previews and even play "Watch Instantly" movies right from the comfort of your living room sofa using a remote if you have SageTV or Vista Media Center.

SageMC NETFLIX PLUGIN

First off we have the SageTV (SageMC required) Plug-in that was originally developed by a user known as DwarF Pullen on the SageTV forums and now updated and improved by Morgan111. Morgan released this version of the plug-in (still a beta version) with the following features:

Browse through movies that are listed in the many NetFlix RSS channels (Top Movies by category etc)

Search For Movie by title

View recent activity (previously rented movies etc)

View movie descriptions, ratings, trailers and more

Launch Watch It Now movies

Add movies to rental queue and manipulate queue items

I've been trying the SageMC plug-in out and it works great. It's really makes Netflix more accessible when you can watch the previews and streaming movies from your TV instead of a laptop. We'll be using this feature to catch up on a few TV show episodes we've missed (The Office for example) and the preview feature will come in handy as well. One thing to note, for viewing instant-watch movies, you can launch the movie, pause and play (with the enter key on your remote) and exit playback all using your remote control, but you can't rewind or fast forward using your remote.

Now we'll see what Netflix has in store for the watch instantly service once they and LG releases those set-top boxes. Hopefully the service will carry improved movie content and these excellent HTPC plug-ins will still be able to work to watch those movies via the 10-foot interface we know as the HTPC!